Jeffrey Dahmer
"After the fear and terror of what I'd done had left, which took about a month or two, I started it all over again. From then on it was a craving, a hunger, I don't know how to describe it, a compulsion, and I just kept doing it, doing it and doing it, whenever the opportunity presented itself." Jeffrey Dahmer was an American serial killer. History Jeffrey Dahmer was born in West Allis, Wisconsin on May 21, 1960. His parents were Lionel Herbert Dahmer, a chemical analyst, and Joyce Dahmer. Seven years later, his brother, David, was born. Jeffrey had a normal childhood, up until the age of 10-15 when he became increasingly introverted and lost interest in social activities and hobbies to the point that he put a dog's head on a stake. He began drinking in his teens, being an alcoholic by high school. In 1977, his parents divorced and he very briefly attended Ohio State University before dropping out due to his drinking. On June 6, 1978, Jeffrey, living with his father, commited his first murder, killing a hitchhiker named Steven Hicks, with whom he planned to have sex. When he tried to leave the house (the rest of the family were not home), Jeffrey bludgeoned him to death with a barbell and buried the body in the backyard. Sometime after that, Jeffrey's father forced him to join the Army, where he did well for two years before being discharged in 1981 due to his alcoholism. When this happened, he was provided by the Army an airplane ticket to anywhere in the country, which he used to go to Miami Beach, Florida. He spent most of his time there at a hospital but was eventually kicked out because of his drinking. He continued doing so when he came home, eventually being arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct later in 1981. In 1982, Jeffrey moved in with his grandmother in West Allis. While he lived there, she found, on different occasions, a fully dressed male mannequin stolen from a store and a .357 Magnum gun in his room. She also felt terrible smells from the basement, to which Jeffrey had brought a dead squirrel and tried to dissolve it in chemicals. He was also arrested for indecent exposure in 1982 and 1986. The second time he masturbated in front of two boys. In the summer of 1988, Jeffrey's grandmother asked him to move out because of his strange behavior and the smell coming from the basement, prompting him to move into an apartment in Milwaukee, closer to his job at the Ambrose Chocolate Factory. The same year he was arrested for drugging and sexually fondling a 13-year old boy. He was sentenced to five years' probation and one year in a work release camp, moving out of his apartment. He was paroled two months early and moved into another Milwaukee apartment, Apartment 213 of the Oxford Apartments complex. On May 27, an intended victim, Konerak Sinthasomphone, escaped after having been drugged and raped by him. When the police arrived, Jeffrey claimed Konerak to be his 19-year old lover and that he had left after they had drunk and argued. Since he was so charming and articulate, the police believed him and didn't look into the boy's real age or the fact that Jeffrey was a registered sex offender on probation. He was arrested for the last time on July 22, 1991 when an intended victim, Tracy Edwards, managed to escape and call for police. When he led two officers to the apartment, they arrested Dahmer and uncovered several grisly items in the apartment, such as: *Photographs of mangled bodies *Four skulls in the refrigerator *Several dismembered organs and bodies *Blue barrel vats containing whole bodies Jeffrey was charged with 15 of the murders and sentenced to 957 years in prison and served this time at the Colombia Correctional Facility in Portage, Wisconsin and eventually declared himself a born-again Christian. On November 28, 1994, he was beaten to death in the prison gym with a dumbbellIronically, the same weapon he used to kill Steven Hicks, his first victim. by a fellow inmate and died on his way to the hospital. His brain was retained for study. Modus Operandi Jeffrey would usually visit gay bars looking for victims and invite them to his apartment or lure them by offering them money to pose for some photos. The majority of the victims were bi- or homosexual and lived "high-risk" lifestyles. A lot of them also had criminal records, often for serious crimes such as arson, rape, battery, and sexual assault. After picking them up, he would bring them home, drug them by crushing prescription drugs and blending it with their drinks, usually rape them, kill them by strangling them with his bare hands or a leather strap, and eviscerate the remains, documenting the processes with a Polaroid camera. He would also engage in sexual acts with the bodies, eventually disposing of them by dissolving them in chemicals to the point that they were completely liquified and could be poured down a toilet or a sink. He would also keep several body parts in his apartment, mostly the heads and genitals, even preserving whole bodies in large, chemical-filled vats and eventually attempted to turn some of them into "zombies" by drilling holes in their skulls and injecting hydrochloric acid or boiling hot water into their temporal lobes using large syringes. He would also consume some victims. Victims *June 6, 1978: Steven Hicks, 19 (bludgeoned) *September 15, 1987: Steven Tuomi, 26 *January 1, 1988: James Doxtator, 14 *March 24, 1988: Richard Guerrero, 25 *September 26, 1988: Somsack Sinthasomphone, 13 (drugged and molested only) *March 25, 1989: Anthony Sears, 24 *June 1990: Eddie Smith, 36 *July 1990: Ricky Beeks, 27 *September 1990: **Ernest Miller, 22 **David Thomas, 23 *February 1991: Curtis Straughter, 19 *April 1991: Errol Lindsey, 19 *May 21, 1991: Tony Hughes, 31 *May 27, 1991: Konerak Sinthasomphone, 14 *June 30, 1991: Matt Turner, 20 (body was placed in a vat) *July 5, 1991: Jeremiah Weinberger, 23 (body was placed in a vat) *July 12, 1991: Oliver Lacy, 23 (body was placed in a vat) *July 19, 1991: Joseph Bradehoft, 25 (body was placed in a vat) *July 21, 1991: Tracy Edwards (attempted, escaped) Criminal Minds Comparison ".]] Jeffrey Dahmer has been referred to several times in Criminal Minds. Copycat killer Daniel Dryden copied one of his kills, picking a man up at a gay bar, strangling him to death and placing the body in a blue plastic barrel; the location of the abandoned apartment where the barrel was left (25th Street, on block 213) also coincided with the location of Dahmer's residence (North 25th Street, Apartment 213). Dahmer was also used in Fear and Loathing as an example of how charming serial killers can be, with a flashback accompanying the reference. Milwaukee detective Vic Wolynski from In Name and Blood also worked on the Dahmer case, and, at one point, voices his disgust at people's morbid fascination with the subject, and claimed to have personally seen the horrors in Dahmer's apartment. Sources *Wikipedia's article about Jeffrey Dahmer *TruTV's articles about Jeffrey Dahmer References Category:Real Life Killers Category:Real People